Monday, August 11, 2008

Last night something horrific happened at my house. It's very possible I'll have to move.

Danny witnessed the entire event, which is good, because if it had been me, I'd be perusing the real estate listings right now instead of typing this.

Sunday night, at approximately 10:08 pm, my kitchen was the scene of a gruesome mass murder.

Here's what went down. I was drunk on the couch (since I'd capped off my three-day women's liberation conference with about seven hours of drinking at various Gainesville establishments.) I was flat on my back, watching a Christian rock concert infomercial and contemplating whether or not I had to throw up when I heard Danny in the kitchen.

"OH...MY...GOD..." (Said with the tone of voice you'd use if you found a severed head in the trunk of your car.)

"What?" I said (notice that I didn't bother getting up even though Danny's tone of voice indicated something along the lines of a severed head in the trunk of a car).

When Danny didn't respond, I was compelled to drag my drunk ass into the kitchen to see what the deal was.

Danny stood with his back to me, his hand in a sneaker, staring at the floor.

"What?" I said again (drunker and more insistent this time). And then I saw it, "OH...MY...GOD!"

A spider with a body the size of a freakishly large peanut was dead on the floor. It was huge even upside down with it's legs curled in AND...it was laying in the middle of a thousand hyper baby spiders which were quickly spreading across the tile like a nasty, living spill of nastiness.

Danny's eyes were wide, "I killed it and then these just exploded out."

I froze for a second. And then drunk brain kicked in. "I have a plan!" I ran to the bathroom to retrieve a large can of aerosol hair spray and re-entered the kitchen like the banshee of low end hair styling products. I blasted the babies with gale force winds of Aussie medium hold control spray.

The baby spiders were so small that the spray had one of two effects. It either blew them clear across the floor or left them feebly swimming in sticky little orange-scented pools. Some of them were quite possibly enjoying themselves.

"Ummm....Stephie?" Danny said from the doorway, "Don't we have bug spray or something?"

"This is working fine! I'm immobilizing them so I can squash them all."

When the entire area was covered in three-fourths of an inch of hair product, I grabbed the trusty Clorox wipes and started squashing. Danny watched the massacre. Which was fine. His heroic deed had already been done. Because if I had been the one to see that monster in the kitchen I would have gotten right in the car and never come back to the house ever, ever again.

Some of the tiny little bastards escaped into the floorboards and I laid the mama and 9, 967 of her babies to rest in the garbage can.

But this morning, as I ate my breakfast of toast and aspirin, I looked at the floorboards and wondered how long it will take for the small band of rebels that escaped my wrath to grow up and avenge their family.

7 comments:

james ford
said...

i always watched the end of CHARLOTTE'S WEB thinking two things: 1) that's a shitload of spiders and 2) ungrateful bitches. i am quite sure that film is one of my key influences to be a good son... and eat like field rat at the county fair.

Well, as you may have heard this weekend, I have a deep love of spiders that just outreaches my deep respect, based on fear, of these crazy creatures. I was totally impressed, as always, with the spiders I saw this weekend in FL. Very very cool! -along with the lizards. Usually I say it is bad luck to kill a spider, but I can see how a big one in the middle of your house, with hundreds more emanating...could be be a wee bit stressful. Hey, we have roaches in NY and you all have spiders. I guess at least roaches don't bite, and they tend not to sprawl out their babies all at once. Good luck with your house-search!

I guess you're not a "One With Nature" type of person....Poor little monster spider, if you had just shooed her outside, then you might have just avoided the wrath! Hey, were was trusty guard dog or mischievous cat through out this whole ordeal? Shouldn't they be hunting for this type of stuff? What kind of pets do you have? They're supposed to protect you when your home is being invaded by alien spiders! Probably sleeping I suppose!

You couldn't be doing that bad, if you could see all those babies. Maybe I should lend you my cat, Skylar loves chasing insects and things. I can just see him now, with all those spiders running around.

Someone told me a similar story involving a spider bite on their body--this person said that they (warning...something gross about to be said...) popped the pus out of the wound and hundreds of spiders came out of it. Yuck! I never really believed them...until now.

oh but baby spiders are so cute! oh, but they grow up! my deal is I have a huge phobia over roaches and some spiders will eat them which garners the utmost respect from me. I even struggled with the cartoon roach in the movie walle...webbie-jeebies. Tracy